Volume 5, No. 7

Setting FASB's Agenda: Analysts & Investors Invited: The Financial Accounting Standards Board has long yearned for financial statement user involvement in its task of setting accounting standards. The obvious way for users to make their voices heard is by responding to the exposure drafts of proposed standards; typically, the user response is very slim. The report of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' Special Committee on Financial Reporting, issued in late 1994, elicited a response from the FASB in the form of an "Invitation to Comment". The document is not an exposure draft of a proposed standard by any means, but it is squarely aimed at the users of financial statements. It's probably more important to users than any single exposure draft has ever been, because their input will help set the agenda of the FASB for perhaps as long as the next five years. The FASB works with the same limitations on its resources as the rest of the world; setting its agenda provides a means of allocating those scarce resources. Given the recent controversies surrounding the FASB's independence, the user community ought to be very interested in the Invitation to Comment. It affords a rare opportunity to make its voice heard on what projects the Board should deem worthy of its time.